Much of English
language media is returning to an old standby: Israel as the neighborhood
bully. Sometimes this perspective is stated outright; more often it simply
underlies the way stories are presented.

Hamas is usually
referred to as a “militant group,” without indicating that it is also the
elected government of Gaza. We get the impression of a renegade gang acting
outside any official capacity. Working with Hamas is Islamic Jihad; though the
two are aligned against Israel they are also in conflict with each other within
the larger context of their shared Islamic extremism.

Yet, rarely is “Islamic
extremism” mentioned, the widespread phenomenon that greatly overshadows the
size of tiny Israel and negates its image as neighborhood bully.

Sometimes Hamas
is referred to as a terrorist organization, often by saying Israel “considers”
them so, suggesting this is Israeli propaganda.But Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by many other
countries, by the EU, US, Japan, Canada, Egypt and Jordan. And all of the
rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel are aimed at civilians, pretty much
the definition of terrorism.

Even the
Palestinian ambassador to the UN freely acknowledges that “every missile” from
Gaza coming into Israel is “a crime against humanity.”There have not been a lot of headlines
conveying this message. Also a war crime is the launching of rockets from
residential areas and endangering one’s own people.

When targeting
Hamas fighters and their weapons, the IDF has many methods of warning civilians to leave. They call cellphones, send texts, and distribute
leaflets so that people will get out of the way. They have a system of “knock
on the roof” as warning and if they see people still in an area they will abort
their mission.During this week the
Israeli government helped
over 800 foreign nationals who wanted to leave Gaza to do so.

But there are
casualties. It is impossible to call people casualties without stopping right
there to say: we should have no wars, ever. Yet, in the world as it is at the
moment, in which Israel’s cities are under rocket fire, its government has the
responsibility to protect its citizens.

Mention of that
responsibility deflates the bully image, as does attributing Israel’s far fewer
casualties to its building of bomb shelters, its requirement since the 1980’s
that apartments have safe rooms, and its investment in a technology that dissolves
incoming rockets in the air before they can do the damage they are intended to
do.

Hamas has been
firing rockets into Israeli towns for years. In 2008 and 2012 when the rocket
firing escalated, and again now, the IDF fired back. A lot of news coverage begins with Israeli
strikes on Gaza as if the neighborhood bully just decided to flex his muscles
for no reason.

Reporting that
sirens sounded in particular cities or that the Iron Dome stopped rockets over
Tel Aviv without ever suggesting that what is transpiring is the attempted
murder of families in their homes helps create a familiar storyline in which
Israel, because it is the stronger country, is to blame for there being a war
at all.